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At the Intersection of Sports and Culture

Photo Credit for Header: Alex Foucre-Stimes

A Baseball Buffet

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A second half. Before the belly has been filled. When the appetite still hungers.

A Major League baseball season is not all that different from a four course meal. Spring Training is the soup, warm and salty like your favorite tomato bisque. The first half of the regular season is the appetizer, just enough to hold you over until the main course arrives. After the all-star break and up through September is the entree, the meat of the regular season when the contenders separate themselves from the pretenders like marrow out of the bone. Dessert is the postseason when the survivors indulge in the opportunity at history and the eternal sweetness of a World Series championship.

But back to the second half of the season, a story about to be written. This is the time when doubts are raised and the cream rises to the top. When teams swap high priced stars for unproven prospects like a patron at a five star restaurant returning an undercooked steak in the hopes that it will return at the right temperature just as the colder weather hits and three scoops of the postseason awaits.

Questions about the menu are quite common this time of year. Can the Astros continue their season du jour? Will Missouri remain the chef’s choice with both the Royals and Cardinals playing like a couple slabs of prime cut? And will the Cubs remain in the race like fresh catch or will their season spoil like so many barrels of fish before?

Baseball fans understand that with the second half of the season about to begin now is not the time for the squeamish, for the faint of heart and stomach. If you want to have what it takes to make it through to dessert you better take a few deep breaths and loosen up the belt a couple notches because from here on out the food is served fast and eyes become bigger than stomachs.

Home for Golf at the Home of Golf

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The Open Championship has never been sweeter than watching St. Andrews from the center of my sofa.

And while a pint would be nice I’ll take a coffee instead. Caffeine over alcohol is my morning vice.

The wind blows cross the Old Course as if propelled out an overinflated set of bagpipes. While, in my house, a warm breeze gently caresses my skin, urging me to get outside and enjoy the beautiful summer day.

I resist mother nature’s siren song and remain indoors, glued to me television screen. Unwilling to flinch or blink for fear that I’ll miss something from Scotland.

Until that is it’s time to take a mid morning snooze. By then St. Andrews will have proven itself fit for a perfect weekend of watching and dreaming.

About aces, eagles and birdies. Fish, chips and Claret Jugs. All the things that make golf so special. Here at my home of golf.

The Day the Sports World Stood Still

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The fields lay fallow. The grass stands stout. Quiet crashes down, up and throughout stadiums like a tsunami, a tidal wave silence.

No scores.

No statistics.

No winners.

No losers.

A 24-hour self-imposed moratorium on competition. Allowing old wounds to heal, and youthful spirits refreshen.

Until tomorrow, when the games begin again anew. With a renewed purpose, a clearer mission. To entertain and distract. Thrill and anger. Joy and sadness.

The emotion of sports takes a well deserved timeout. Clearing minds. Filling hearts. Returning soon.

 

 

Fear of a Dwarf Planet

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This morning we reached for the stars, this evening they take the field in Cincinnati. A childlike curiosity colliding on the shores of the Ohio River and the outer reaches of our galaxy.

It turns out that space and baseball share more in common than the relativity of time. Last night’s Home Run Derby demonstrated that a countdown can be a good thing, that something as simple as the the tic-toc of a clock can reignite interest in an event that had laid dormant for far too long.

Now baseball mustn’t stop there. America’s Pastime can continue to propel itself into the future by embracing a broader coalition of fans and rules to better align itself with the 21st century. Speed up rules must take affect, ticket prices must be curtailed. The derby was a start but more can be done, more can always be done.

Same is true for space. Today our solar system is full of one fewer unknown now that images of Pluto have been beamed back across the Milky Way giving us our best glance yet of the icy orb.

Space however remains a bundle full of mysteries, a horizon lined with question marks and quantum leaps. Collectively, human beings have placed superficial limits on our understanding by allowing things as trivial and earthly as budget cuts and deficits to determine our intellectual reach. The answers are out there, somewhere amidst the suns and supernovas and unless we foster inquiry and fund future exploration then we run the risk of succumbing to our own inertia. Thinking inward rather than outward towards the ever expanding fringes of our universe will spell an untimely end for human existence on Earth.

Yet, as the Home-Run Derby proved last night, the clock should not be feared. The unknown must be embraced.

 

The Spieth Has Landed In Scotland

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From Moline to the Moors, the Heartland to the Highlands, the reigning Masters and U.S. Open champion arrives in St. Andrews with a Grand Slam on his mind and a tractor sized paycheck in his pocket following another victory, ho-hum, at the John Deere Classic, a tournament many believed it would be wise for him to bypass on account of much more loftier pursuits. Only time will tell if the tune up in the Quad Cities was worth the detour but either way that 850k will certainly help pay for a few more fishing excursions to the Bahamas.

Waiting in the wings at the home of golf, a collection of ravenous rivals feasting on an opportunity to hoist the Claret Jug. Walker, Woods, Westwood and Watsons young and old. Day and DJ, Rose and Rickie. Fowler that is and if there’s a hotter golfer on the planet right now other than Heir Jordan it would have to be the diminutive dirt bike rider who, fresh off a victory at the Scottish Open, has proven once again to be more substance than style.

And what most Rory be thinking, with ankle elevated and spirit deflated? A little game of footie with friends is always worth the risk but the significance of soccer in the Northern Irishman’s life pales in comparison to the competition on the links and the budding rivalry with a certain 21 year old Texan possessing realistic designs on seizing the world’s top spot from the hobbled McIlroy.

Never a dull moment or dry pint at St. Andrews and the 144th Open Championship.